13 April, 2016

The Fascism-Industrial complex: How xenophobia & nationalism lead to war & terror

The
media and right-wing politicians were quick to latch on to last
month’s Brussels bombing to support a narrative of nationalism and
xenophobia that leads to more war and terrorism.

Sarcasm
aside, Europe is indeed battling dangerous demons. Demons which the
world, and mainly Europeans themselves, thought died long ago with
the fall of Nazism in 1945 — back when Germany was gripped by a
terrifying ideology that claimed millions of innocent lives.

Then,
anti-Semitism was almost a state religion, a political truth
professed and preached not just by state officials, but state
institutions. The media also played a key role in popularizing,
rationalizing and otherwise mainstreaming the hate of the Jews, the
hate of this elusive “others” fascists are always so keen on
targeting.

Today this
hateful, sadistic nihilism is coming back to haunt the world. In this
age of globalism, and globalization, fascism, too, has become a
global brand.

And while
hate might not be a new concept, state officials, industry leaders
and other movers and shakers’ show a startling willingness to
promote the cultural, ethnic and sectarian narratives which, in the
end, might destroy the very freedom they claim to protect.

It would be
wise to remember that fascism does not rhyme with civil liberties.

It was
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul that owns Fox News, in the wake of
the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in France, who suggested that all
Muslims share the guilt of terrorism. He stated: “Maybe most
Moslems are peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their
growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.”

Not only
does this statement ignore many protests against terrorism in the
Muslim world, but fast forward to 2016 and the rhetoric remains very
much the same — if not even more sinister in undertones.

Take
comments by Laurence Rossignol, France’s minister of family,
children and women’s rights. In a Mar. 30 interview. Rossignol
calmly stated that Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab are like
“Negroes who accept slavery … Of course there are women who
choose it [the veil] … There were American Negroes who were in
favour of slavery.”

Who said
colonialism was dead? Quite clearly the miasmas of imperialism and
ethnocentrism survived America’s grand world democracy-building
project and that little charter known as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.

But what’s
truly behind Islamophobia? What if Islam is just a convenient
scapegoat in a Middle Eastern game of thrones? What if, and it is a
big IF, this rising fascism against all things Arab, Muslim or
vaguely Islamic-looking is actually the manifestation of unfettered
capitalism?

In other
words, Muslims have become a target of choice not because of their
faith, or their alleged potential link to radicalism, but because of
their geography, and Western powers’ hunger for control in the
Middle East. Fear and hate here have been engineered as conduits for
imperialism — a mean to justify wars and mass killings.